Calming Activities for Children That Actually Work

You have tried the breathing. You have tried the glitter jar, the counting to ten and the quiet corner with the cushions. Some of it works on a good day. On the days you actually need it, very little does.

That is not because the ideas are wrong. It is usually because they arrive in the wrong order.

A fast body cannot be told to be still

When a child is wound up, their body is in a mobilised state. Heart up, muscles ready, attention darting. That state exists to move, and it is very good at moving.

Most calming activities ask it to stop straight away. Sit still. Take a deep breath. Look at the jar. For a body that is still going fast, that is like asking someone to brake from seventy to nothing in one go. It does not feel calming. It feels like being held back, and being held back usually makes a fast body push harder.

So the activity fails, and it looks like the child is refusing to calm down. Really, the activity skipped a step.

Big first, then slow, then still

The order that tends to work is the order a body comes down in on its own.

Big first. Let the energy out on purpose. Push against a wall. Stamp. Carry something heavy across the room. Jump ten times, then five. This is not winding them up further. It is giving the fast part somewhere to go, so it does not have to come out sideways.

Then slow. Do the same thing more slowly. Slow stamps. A slow push. Walking like a sleepy animal. The body follows the pace it is given, so the pace is the lever.

Then still. Only now does stillness have a chance. Lying flat under a heavy blanket. A long breath out, longer than the breath in. Pressing feet into the floor and noticing them.

Skip the first stage and the last stage rarely works. Start with the first, and the last often arrives on its own.

What tends to help

Heavy work. Pushing, pulling, carrying and squeezing. Pressure tells the body something is holding it, and it is the single most reliable thing for a child who is all over the place.

Long out-breaths, not deep in-breaths. "Take a deep breath" often produces a big gulp that winds a body up. Blowing out slowly, as if through a straw or at a candle you do not want to put out, does the opposite.

Copying. A child who will not follow an instruction will often copy a face or a shape. Do it yourself, slowly, and let them match you. Being matched by a steady grown-up does more than any instruction.

Something for the hands. Tracing a line with a finger, squeezing a ball, colouring a box dark. Busy hands give the body a job, and a body with a job settles faster than a body told to settle.

Nothing to get right. If the activity can be done wrong, it becomes another thing to worry about. The best calming activities have no score and no finish line.

What doesn't help

Calming as a consequence. If the calm corner or the breathing is used as a punishment, children stop choosing it, and choosing it is the whole point.

Teaching it mid-meltdown. A new skill cannot be learned in the middle of a flood. Practise on ordinary days, when nobody needs it, so it is there on the hard ones.

Too many choices. A basket of twenty calming tools is twenty decisions. A flooded child needs two or three, always in the same place.

Talking all the way through it. Fewer words, slower voice. The activity is doing the work. You do not need to narrate it.

The bit about you

The most calming thing in the room is almost always the grown-up, which is useful and also a lot to carry at five o'clock.

You do not need to feel calm to help. You need to move slowly, speak slowly and breathe out slowly, and that can be done on the outside while the inside is still catching up. Children borrow the pace you show them, not the one you feel.

When to get more support

Children vary enormously in how quickly they come down, and most get faster at it with age and practice.

Speak to your GP (or pediatrician), health visitor or your child's school if your child is rarely able to settle, if big feelings are happening many times a day, if they are hurting themselves or others, or if you are worried. Trust that instinct. Nothing here is a diagnosis or a substitute for someone who knows your child.

The short version

Calming activities fail when they ask a fast body to stop straight away.

Go big first, then slow, then still. Use heavy work, long out-breaths and copying, and practise on the easy days.

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Quiet Moves is thirty things to do when a feeling gets big, one to a page, spiral bound so it lies flat on the floor. Copy Me is ten things to copy, loud at the start and still by the end, and The Wobble is a book a child does with their hands. All three are part of the Little Signals series.

Keep reading: Why Does My Child Get So Angry? · Why Small Changes of Plan Cause Such Big Reactions